


Ante Up

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Card Games, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: The crew should have known better than to play Tall Card with a psychic.
Relationships: Jayne Cobb/River Tam
Comments: 14
Kudos: 71
Collections: Multifandom Drabble 2020





	Ante Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ANGSWIN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANGSWIN/gifts).



The crew should have known better than to play Tall Card with a psychic.

River liked the way everyone's minds felt as they played: amused, scheming, and all intent for once on the same thing. Well, _mostly_ the same: Kaylee and her brother – and sometimes Mal and Inara, now that they weren't being so stupid – sometimes got caught up in closed loops. Oceans, hearthfires, touch as a medium of intimate communication – but only sometimes, and she'd learned how not to get caught too deep in what wasn't hers.

River couldn't choose _not_ to hear, not since the Hands of Blue had taken the girl and made of her a weapon; but she could choose to _focus_ , to use one voice to drown the others out.

She frowned over her hand at Jayne, then pushed a slip of paper into the pot.

Jayne eyed the chore she'd written there, then the others already heaped together like raked leaves. "Gorramit, girl," he swore, teetering on the edge of temptation.

Jumbled up in his thoughts, she sensed greedy calculation; cynicism about his odds; a flash of her naked; and the underlying, determined, disgruntled solidity that was just _Jayne_.

She stretched one leg casually under the galley table, tracing her toes up the inside of his knee.

Heat rose, hers this time to catch, as steady as everything else about him: he swallowed hard, then hastily folded, removing the only competitive hand from play. But under the table, he rubbed a thumb up the sole of her bare foot.

River shivered, then as the hands were revealed, scooped the pot to herself, grinning. 

Jayne _really_ should have known better than to play Tall Card with a psychic.

She'd just have to make it up to him later. River was pretty sure he wouldn't mind.


End file.
